Musculoskeletal injuries and workplace hazards in slaughterhouses

Physical Hazards of Slaughterhouse Workers

The Nature of Slaughterhouse Work

Musculoskeletal Disorders

Diseases

Trauma

Burns

Hearing

Safeguards

Ergonomics

Dangerous Equipment

Reporting and Organizational Culture

Slaughterhouses are among the most hazardous workplace environments, and represent a significant challenge for industrial hygienists. Musculoskeletal injuries are the most common form, and are typically related to repetitive stress. Workers in this industry are asked to perform routine tasks at a sustained high rate of speed, and the use of advanced ergonomics is not universal in the industry. Trauma injuries occur at a much higher rate than normal in this industry and these are usually related to the sharp blades and heavy equipment. Around two-thirds of musculoskeletal injuries are serious enough to necessitate time off work, and many workers will work through chronic pains without reporting it. Indeed, while rates of injuries in this industry have diminished significantly, there are reasons to believe that some of this reduction is due to the increase in non-reporting of injuries. There are many other significant injury risks as well, including chemical burns, psychological trauma, hearing damage and exposure to disease and pathogens.

For the repetitive stress injuries, the most common remediation is ergonomics. Ergonomic solutions can benefit the companies as well, by allowing workers to perform tasks more quickly but with less injury risk. However, the organizational culture in this industry is a barrier to improving safety conditions. The industry emphasizes high volume throughput that often runs counter to ergonomic principle. Furthermore, worker safety has never really been taken that seriously as an issue. Many workers are unskilled and uneducated, and this work represents a steady job at above minimum wage. These workers are typically disempowered, and this affects reporting of injuries and it also affects the likelihood of workers to enforce what few rights they do have.

Overall, the slaughterhouse industry presents significant challenges to the industrial hygiene industry. Nearly every aspect of this industry creates some form of risk, and as a result there are a number of solutions that need to be implemented. Common practices like protecting dangerous mechanical equipment are recommended, as well as ergonomic best practices. Training needs to be improved dramatically in this industry, and the organizational culture with respect to workplace safety and hygiene need to be improved significantly as well.

Introduction

Ever since the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in 1906, attention has been paid to the working conditions in slaughterhouses. That book depicts turn-of-the-century slaughterhouses in immigrant areas of Chicago, and the picture is grim. Working conditions are described as being horrific, and the slaughterhouse managers essentially take advantage of immigrants desperate for work, presenting them with grim working conditions, low pay and gruelling hours. On those factors, it does not seem as though much has changed in the slaughterhouse and meatpacking industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over 86,000 people work in the slaughterhouse industry nationwide. The average wage for a worker in this industry is $25,880 per year, or $12.44 per hour, so while these are not minimum wage jobs, they are low-paying jobs, especially given the working conditions. The bottom quartile of workers makes $10.31 per hour or worse, so there are many jobs in the industry that remain minimum wage (BLS, 2014). Jobs in this industry are concentrated on the Midwest and the South, where more animals are raised and in many cases were regulations are minimal.

Slaughterhouse workers face a challenging working environment. The job is physically laborious, the equipment is deadly, sharp and very dangerous, animal carcasses are heavy, there is constant exposure to pathogens, and these workers also face significant psychological trauma (Dillard, 2008). The meat industry is described as "a gigantic maze of factory farms, slaughterhouses and packaging plants ... that kills and processes over 9 billion animals every year" (Dillard, 2008). The industry generally employees low-wage workers with relatively low levels of education. This is because the work is generally low-skill work, but also because the industry working conditions are generally awful, and only the most desperate will work under these conditions.

Musculoskeletal Disorders

As this paper is concerned with the physical hazards of slaughterhouse work, less attention will be paid to the psychological effects of this work, even though it is an industrial hygiene issue. Only where it interacts or relates to the physical hazards will it be given further attention. Within the category of physical hazards, there are several that have been identified in studies regarding the issue. Musculoskeletal injuries are among the most common type, due to the physical nature of the work, and the rapid pace of repetitive motion over prolonged periods of time. Carpal tunnel, tendonitis and white finger. Meatpacking workers are at particular risk due to the weight of the animals being processed and the thickness of their bones, such that upwards of 51 employees per 100 suffer injury in a given year (Dillard, 2008).

Musculoskeletal ailments are one of the most common forms of injury amount slaughterhouse workers. The repetitive nature of the work creates significant ergonomic issues for workers in the industry. Industrial hygienists are often tasked with improving the ergonomic conditions in a workplace, and slaughterhouses are among the more challenging environments in which to do this. There has been debate among scholars whether it is more effective to lower workloads in order to lower the stress on shoulders, arms and hands, or whether increased strength training can resolve these issues (Sundstrup, et al., 2013). In best case situations, professional ergonomists are used to improve working conditions.

Disease

Animals are inherently dirty, and the animals that typically go through industrial slaughterhouses are exceptionally so. They have typically lived their entire lives indoors, with no access to sunlight or fresh air, and in cramped conditions. Disease and injury are common among animals that arrive at a typical slaughterhouse for processing. Exposure to so many animals in the course of duties increase the risk for slaughterhouse workers to contract a wide range of diseases. The extant literature identifies several.

A more moderate disease is dermatitis. Irritant contact dermatitis is a common ailment among slaughterhouse workers, especially those who process pigs. Another common skin ailment is known as "gut eczema," which arises from contact with intestines and mesenteric fat. Furthermore, occupational allergic contact dermatitis is common among those who routinely handle animals. The wide range of bacteria and viruses found in the slaughterhouse environment dramatically increase the risk to slaughterhouse workers of contracting skin problems (Veien, 2012). This problem is difficult to resolve. Thousands of animals pass through slaughterhouses daily and they are the underlying cause of skin issues. Animals being inherently dirty, it is difficult to tell if remedies at the farm level would be of any particular use. However, there is a high level of integration within the industry, so there is potential for resolution, if a solution can be found. Commonly, however, skin issues are viewed as minor in the context of slaughterhouse worker health and safety, and the use of rubber gloves is a common means of reducing the risk. Not much attention is paid to this issue beyond that.

In addition, there are a number of other illnesses that are found in animal tissue and blood, to which workers are exposed in the course of their duties. Many slaughterhouse workers have low education levels, and many also lack English language fluency. Thus, there are not only communication barriers that exist between management and the workers in these facilities, but many who work in these facilities are not necessarily among the best and brightest of workers available, to say the least. These are vulnerable workers who must be trained on issues such as contamination. This is a food safety issue, but also a human safety issue as well. The level of training on general slaughterhouse hygiene and on specific issues related to blood and tissue varies from one facility to the next, but it was found in one study that 89% of workers in the industry had no training in safe food handling, putting the facility and its workers at significant contamination risk (Mothershaw et al., 2006). Understanding the risks is the first step in preventing illness and injury in the workplace.

Studies have been conducted to assess the risks associated with specific viruses or bacteria. For example, slaughterhouse work has been implication in toxoplasmosis and Q fever, owing to the presence of T. gondii and C. burneti. A study of abattoir workers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil found that 72% of employees were serologically positive for T. gondii and 29% for C. burneti. Workers across all areas of the facility were found to have high levels of exposure to these toxins, whether they worked in the corral or on the killing floor. Significant percentages of the cattle that were processed were found to have C. burneti and T. gondii, which is how the workers acquired these. Occasional exposure to cattle does not convey the risk of infection, but daily exposure to chronically-infected cattle does create risk, making this specifically an occupational hazard (Riemann et al., 1975). These are just two of the many bacteria and virus that live on or in animals to which slaughterhouse workers are exposed on an continuous basis.

Dysmenorrhea has also been associated with slaughterhouse work. This is a menstrual condition, and it has been found that exposure to cold and intense physical workloads in particular have been associated with an increase in its incidence among female slaughterhouse workers, again highlighting the physical toll that this work typically takes on its workers (Messing et al., 1993).

Trauma

OSHA (2015) notes that the rate of serious injury among slaughterhouse workers is more than triple that of the U.S. industrial average. Serious injuries make up a significant portion of the musculoskeletal injuries suffered by workers in this industry, and that is the largest class of injuries. Thus, it is not simply a matter of occasional tendonitis, but the risk of blunt trauma injuries is also very high in slaughterhouse work. Around 20-30 people die each year in the industry. They are cut with sharp knives or mechanical blades, crushed in equipment, for example while cleaning it, or otherwise suffer fatal injury in mishaps. Trauma is a significant risk in this industry to begin with, but the fast pace of work, the sharp blades, the crowded conditions and overall fatigue all serve to elevate the risk associated with trauma such that fatal injuries are relatively commonplace.

Burns

Burns are another category of risk faced by slaughterhouse workers. The need for sterilization at such facilities necessitates the use of cleaners such as ammonia and chlorine, which can be hazardous with overexposure. Anecdotal evidence suggests that overexposure to chlorine can cause blistering, burning of internal organs such as lungs, and other serious injury (Schlosser, 2001). Eyes are especially at risk from burns, as chemicals and steam are used to sterilize plants (GAO, 2005). Even when lungs are not burned, they can be damaged through exposure to various chemicals, leading to illness and adverse medical conditions later in life.

Hearing

Many animal processing facilities are very loud. Animals are in various states of pain and terror and can be loud, especially pigs. Many facilities also utilize heavy machinery to perform a number of functions. This can create conditions whereby workers have prolonged exposure to high decibel levels. Without proper protection, hearing damage can result (GAO, 2005).

Safeguards

The improvements over the past twenty years in the industry arise from a number of efforts. Typically, workers don several items of safety equipment in the course of their duties. Bump caps are used to protect against injuries to the head, which can include cuts and concussions from both animals and equipment. Hair nets are used to keep hair out of machinery, as the consequences of that could easily be fatal. Earplugs and safety goggles are used to address problems with loud machinery and chemicals respectively (GAO, 2005). It is possible, however, that inadequate goggles could fail to full protect a worker from the effects of chemical exposure to the eyes. Many workers wear rubber gloves, aprons and boots to reduce their exposure level to blood on the job. Arm guards are used to defend against injuries to the lower arm.

These items of safety equipment, however, do not address all of the common injuries. For example, most workers have minimal if any protection for their torso. Trunk and back injuries are common among slaughterhouse workers. They are kicked by live animals, exposed to heavy moving containers, machinery, animal carcasses and other heavy objects. Injuries occur regularly from falls from multilevel walkways, especially in wetter environments and from slipping on wet floors (GAO, 2005). Lifting heavy objects, strains, and repetitive lifting all result in back injuries, and safety equipment is usually a poor defense against back injuries.

Gloves protect hands against blood, but they provide fairly flimsy protection against cuts. The need for manual dexterity makes it difficult to balance guarding against cuts with the need for dexterity to deliver precise cuts, and at a high rate of frequency. Such gloves do exist, but are expensive and not in common usage in the industry, where simple disposable latex gloves are more common.

There are also limited protections for the lungs. Workers often have access to face masks, but their use is not always mandatory. Facemasks can prevent ingesting certain types of things, such as blood droplets, but are ineffective at defending against all of the pathogens to which a slaughterhouse worker might be exposed. Even workers who work with cleaning chemicals are not always given proper protection for their lungs and internal organs.

Ergonomics

Many of the injuries, in particular the repetitive musculoskeletal ones, are best addressed through ergonomics. Greater attention to ergonomics since the early 1990s has allowed for the rate of such injuries to be reduced significantly. However, this is still a common injury class and remains at a rate much higher than the rate for the general population (GAO, 2005). OSHA (2015) recommends ergonomics programs as among the most important safeguards for workers in this industry. Ergonomics is a specialized field, but it intersects with that of industrial hygiene in situations like this. Body maps are the first step in an ergonomics program, as they can determine where the greatest risks lie with each job, based on data gathered throughout the industry (Messing et al., 2008). Once the risks are understood, ergonomists can then focus on finding better ways to perform the tasks that are creating the most problems.

Ergonomic training is also more sustainable than strength-building exercises (Sundstrup et al., 2013). While the latter can be valuable in the short-term, there is a difference between strength and endurance, and people who work the hours that most slaughterhouse workers put in are unlikely to have the energy to engage in such exercises routinely. They are likely to lapse, especially when they already suffer pain, and that makes exercise a less practical approach. Ergonomics remains the best approach to managing repetitive stress injury risk in the slaughterhouse environment.

A comprehensive ergonomics program requires not only an ergonomics professional to assist with the work design, but the resolution of several other issues as well. For example, training levels need to improve. Where it has been found that most workers in the industry receive basically no safety training, that will need to change. Even the supervisors will need to receive training. Furthermore, the language barriers within the industry need to be effectively broken down. In this industry, because it is common that workers are immigrants (legal or not is irrelevant at this point), a number of different languages are spoken. Supervisors may be Anglophone, and the English skills of the workers may be poor. While it is fairly reasonable that immediate supervisors in many facilities have Spanish-language skills, workers who speak other languages will inevitably receive even less training and guidance than their peers.

Dangerous Equipment

A number of issues arise in the slaughterhouse environment with respect to dangerous equipment. The use of sharp blades is commonplace in the industry, yet the demands placed on the workers for pace often result in the use of dull blades. Workers report that they are unable to take time to sharpen blades, and by the end of their shifts are working with dull blades, which changes the way that they work, their cutting style for example, since they are still expected to maintain the same pace (Schlosser, 2001). Ultimately, this exposes the workers to various musculoskeletal injuries but it also creates problems with respect to cutting injuries, as duller blades are more likely to slip. A simple method such as having a person whose sole job is to keep blades sharp and then rotate those blades on and off the floor would alleviate this problem, but that does not appear to be industry practice.

Slaughterhouses have become increasingly mechanized over the past twenty years (GAO, 2005). This also increases the risk to workers, as they often perform tasks in the vicinity of operating machinery, much of which is exceptionally dangerous. OSHA recommends a full inspection of facilities by an industrial hygienist to ensure that all dangerous equipment is protected in order to minimize the risk to workers who are in the vicinity of this equipment. Any machine part that can cause injury should be protected, and the hazards to machine operators need to be controlled or eliminated as well (OSHA, 2015).

Reporting and Organizational Culture

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are organizational culture issues within the industry that dramatically increase the risk to workers as well. The use of undocumented immigrants only exacerbates the lack of empowerment among workers, but the reality is that many facilities are located in rural areas, where they are the largest employer, and they hire unskilled, uneducated workers. As a natural consequence of this, the people working in the most dangerous jobs have only the vaguest concept of their rights, and are not typically empowered to stand up for their rights. any rightly fear for their jobs, which despite being poor-paying are often better-paying than the alternative in the local market, in order to entice people to take on work in such awful conditions. Reporting of injuries is anathema to some groups in the industry, much less whistleblowing.

This reality is combined with management that emphasizes speed above all else. The modern meat industry is characterized by an undifferentiated product, and customers who seek low price above all else. As such, the industry is driven by a high-volume, low-margin strategy. This creates a situation where managers at slaughterhouses prioritize high volumes above all else, as that is what they are being evaluated on by their superiors. Furthermore, this is an inherently dangerous working environment, so to some extent injuries are accepted. People working in slaughterhouses, and the people who run them, both accept that injuries are an inevitable consequence of the industry. Thus, there are few repercussions when injuries occur. Indeed, as long as rates are stable or declining, there seems to be little concern. The workers can be easily replaced, given that it does not take much training to get a new worker up to speed. What all this means is that from an organizational perspective there is little incentive to improve worker protections, when weighed against the incentives to increase production. Many ergonomic approaches recommend reducing the pace of work, for example, in order to lessen the repetitive stress that workers experience, but that approach conflicts with managerial priorities (Schlosser, 2001).

Conclusions

The slaughterhouse industry is one of the most dangerous ones in which to work. There are numerous factors that contribute to this, but even with the best practices this is still an industry that involves sharp blades, live animals, exposure to blood and viscera, and exposure to hazardous chemicals. So, at best, it will still be a dangerous workplace environment. For the industrial hygienist, there are many key issues that have to be addressed in order to reduce the risk of injury and illness that comes with slaughterhouse work.

Safety equipment is not always adequate, especially where it relates to blade risk, and that goes both for the mechanical equipment in these facilities and for worker protective gear as well. It is important that the best safety equipment possible is used, in order to further reduce the risk of these types of injuries.

Musculoskeletal injuries, particularly related to repetitive stress, are the leading cause of injury in the industry, and many of these are sufficiently serious as to require time away from work. Poor worker protections often see workers try to work through such injuries, which only increases the risk of further injury. Among the remediation methods, ergonomics holds the most promise for this type of injury, but the pace of work might need to be slowed in some instances as well.

Industrial hygienists can also address chemical hazards and hearing risk, usually through improved safety equipment to guard the ears, eyes and lung. Such risks are higher than average in this industry. Protective equipment can also be seen as a solution to the pathogens to which workers are exposed on account of processing large amounts of animals on a continuous basis.

Moreover, there are significant issues with respect to education, training and organizational culture. To truly see improvement, the culture surrounding the industry needs to be re-oriented towards safety and worker's rights. Given that the complaints about worker health and safety today are the same ones Upton Sinclair wrote about, this seems unlikely. But training can be addressed. Too often, workers receive no safety training, and in many cases language barriers all but prevent effective training from taking place. Yet, this is among the most important areas where industry practice can be improved.